Monday, November 30, 2015

One of the great writing opportunities in the DC area is the
FREE Jenny McKean Moore Community Workshop offered through George Washington
University. This year it will be fiction classes, and the application deadline
is DECEMBER 30. I took one of these workshops many years ago and had a great
experience

Note: For reasons unknown to me, this info is not posted on
a website, so this really IS all you need to know to apply.

The George Washington University

Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Fiction Workshop

Tuesdays, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

January 19 to April 19

Led by Kseniya Melnik

Come and take part in a semester-long fiction workshop! To
apply, you do not need academic qualifications or publications. The class will
include some readings of published writings (primarily short stories), but will
mainly be a roundtable critique of work submitted by class members. There are
no fees to participate in the class, but you will be responsible for making
enough copies of your stories for all fifteen participants. Students at
Consortium schools (including GWU) are not eligible.

To apply, please submit a brief letter of interest and a
sample of your writing, 12 pt type, double spaced, and no more than 7 pages in
length. Make sure you include your name, address, home and work telephone
numbers, and email address for notification. Application materials will not be
returned, but will be recycled once the selection process is completed.
Applications must be received at the following address by close of business on Wednesday,
December 30, 2015.

JMM Fiction Workshop

Department of English

The George Washington University

801 22nd Street, NW (Suite 760)

Washington, DC 20052

All applicants will be notified by email of the outcome of
their submissions no later than January 16, 2016.

Kseniya Melnik is the 2015-16 Jenny McKean Moore
Writer-In-Washington at The George Washington University. Her debut book is the
linked story collection Snow in May, which
was short-listed for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and long-listed for
the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Born in Magadan, Russia,
she moved to Alaska in 1998, at the age of 15. She received her MFA from New
York University. Her work has appeared in The
Brooklyn Rail, Epoch, Esquire (Russia), Virginia Quarterly Review, Prospect
(UK), and was selected for Granta’s
New Voices series.

Monday, November 23, 2015

I thought this was an amusing report from attending a
marathon reading of Moby-Dick:

...The inaugural event occurred in 2012 and took place in three
independent bookstores over the course of three days. There are other readings
across the country, as the New York Timesnoted, “with bearded, bespectacled acolytes flocking to
seaside ports, sipping from thermoses of grog and readjusting their sweaters at
the podium,” but this event was New York City’s first. This year, the event was
compacted into two days and delivered before Frank Stella’s Melville-inspired
sculptures. At this point, I think it is important to note the origins of the
word “marathon”: a feat of endurance that resulted in immediate death….

Here’s a nice review of THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST on BookBrowse…and
it was selected as the Editor’s Choice! Because the review is posted for non-subscribers
only for a week, I’m going to cheat and include the entire text here:

Exploring the many facets of grief through fiction in a
variety of formats and voices, This Angel on My Chest deserves
a wide audience.

Leslie Pietrzyk draws on her own experiences in This
Angel on My Chest, a collection of loosely connected short stories, each of
which features a young widow. Pietrzyk, whose husband died of a heart attack at
the age of 37, deftly explores the various aspects of grief she endured
following the tragedy, some aspects of which continue to affect her more than a
decade later.

The book is fictional, but the author has said that
she made a point of including at least "one hard, true thing" in each
story, tiny details that would never occur to someone who hasn't gone through a
deep loss. For example, in one of the stories she talks about her husband's
love for malted milk balls – and regret after his death that she more
frequently bought peanut M&Ms because they were her favorite.
So while the tales feature different women in different circumstances, each has
an underlying ring of truth that blurs the line between fact and fiction. In
some of the stories Pietrzyk does seem to talk directly to her husband but
whether it's the fictional spouse lost by the character or the real-life
equivalent the author lost, it's impossible to tell.

Unsurprisingly This Angel on My Chest is very touching but the
feelings expressed aren't limited to sorrow. They instead cycle through a whole
gamut of emotions such as anger, fear, confusion and depression. The book is
outward looking too, exploring characters' reactions to their husbands' deaths
and the responses of those around the women, rather than depicting any of them
as objects of pity.

It made me more appreciative of the people in my life, and also caused me to
pause and wonder what I'd miss about them should they predecease me, things
that I take for granted now. While I choked up a bit from time to time, I
generally didn't find the book overly sad or depressing. I was instead
primarily impressed by the author's ability to completely capture her subject
so perfectly. I've been lucky and haven't known this level of loss in my life,
but Pietrzyk's writing went a long way toward helping me understand what she
and others have experienced.

The author confines most of her stories to grief and the mourning process, only
making her way to healing toward the end of the collection as she seems to
apologize to her late husband for moving on. Given the fact that some healing seems
to have occurred in her life — she has remarried — I found it interesting that
she chose to limit her stories to the death of a spouse and its immediate
aftereffects. But even with this limited scope, the book doesn't become dull or
keep hammering on a single subject. The variety of voices, formats and emotions
is rather remarkable and keeps the collection entertaining as perspectives
shift from one account to the next. She moves beyond the standard short story
form by including elements such as a multiple-choice quiz and a list of foods
mentioned throughout the book. Neither of these formats sounds particularly
remarkable; what, you may ask yourself, is so exciting about a list? Yet
somehow the author turns chapters such as these into some of the most moving
and memorable parts of the book.

Sometimes Pietrzyk's use of perspective is confusing. In some of the stories
she uses "you," and I found myself re-reading to determine if
"you" was the narrator referring to herself (as in, "you have to
ask yourself if…") or if "you" was the narrator talking to her
absent spouse ("you once said…"). The same uncertainty occurred over
the use of "she" referring to an unnamed character in a chapter that
focused on more than one woman. Careful reading of these sections, though, will
certainly help avoid the disorientation I occasionally felt, and the overall
quality of Pietrzyk's writing makes any struggle through these passages well
worth the effort.

This Angel on My Chest is excellent from start to finish, and
deserves a wide audience. Readers who can get beyond their knee-jerk aversion
to the subject will find a real gem here.

I’m very pleased that one of my stories is appearing in the
new issue of The Greensboro Review. “Easy Love” is one of the stories I had to
cut from THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST so I’m happy it found a happy home. Here’s the
opening:

Sunday was
Emma’s birthday. It was also my
birthday, and, unfortunately, Dan’s birthday, too. What were the chances of an entire family
having a birthday on the same day?
“We’re just crazy-lucky like that,” Emma used to tell people.

This year,
Emma would turn thirteen, I was going to be forty-three, and Dan—my husband,
Emma’s dad—had died last April, so he would be forty-five forever.

In the
weeks leading up to the “big day,” Emma claimed desperately one moment that she
had to have a party and claimed the next that all parties were “annoying” and
“stupid” and that she wouldn’t sit through one unless I gave her a thousand
dollars. I longed to spend the day
distracted by a chaotic sleepover or shepherding a herd of girls through an
afternoon of disco bowling, but the final word was absolutely not, no “pathetic”
birthday party for her.

“Are you
sure?” I said. “I think maybe we should
do something.”

“No party,”
she said. “No special dinner. No nothing.
Just no.” She was hunkered down
into the big leather couch, and I perched on the edge, watching the Caps’
hockey game. Emma wore the lucky “Rock
the Red” T-shirt Dan gave her during last year’s play-off run. Dan had been a hockey fan, had played goalie
in college, and while I could follow the action, I couldn’t care about the
outcome the way he and Emma did. Win,
lose, tie: there was another game soon enough, another season, a different team
to root for if yours wasn’t any good this year.
Not that I shared these scandalous thoughts. …

Unfortunately, the story isn’t online, but I have an extra
copy of the journal…send me an email with
your mailing address if you would like to read it. I’ll select one
person at random on Wednesday evening. Here’s my email: lesliepietrzyk@gmail.com Please put
GREENSBORO REVIEW in the header, so I can keep my inbox organized!

Saturday, November 21, 2015

What? You still haven’t tried my amazing Thanksgiving
stuffing? It’s not too late...this can (and should) be the year! Simply put, this is the
best stuffing there is or will be—take it from one who has eaten boatloads of stuffing through the years. I'm pretty sure this stuffing would be in the running for my last meal if I were ever on death row, if the prison kitchen would let me make it myself.

Cornbread & Scallion Stuffing

Adapted from the beloved, still-missed Gourmet magazine,
November 1992
(It’s actually called Cornbread, Sausage & Scallion Stuffing, but in an
uncharacteristic nod to heart-health, I don’t put in the sausage. See the note
below if you’d like to add the sausage.)

Make the cornbread: In a bowl stir together the flour, the
cornmeal, the baking powder, and the salt. In a small bowl, whisk together the
milk, the egg, and the butter, and add the milk mixture to the cornmeal
mixture, and stir the batter until it is just combined. Pour the batter into a
greased 8-inch-square baking pan (I actually use a cast iron skillet) and bake
the cornbread in the middle of a preheated 425 F oven for 20-25 minutes, or
until a tester comes out clean. (The corn bread may be made 2 days in advance
and kept wrapped tightly in foil at room temperature.)

Into a jellyroll pan, crumble the corn bread coarse, bake it in the middle of a
preheated 325 F oven, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes, or until it is dry
and golden, and let it cool.

Make the stuffing: In a large skillet, melt 6
tablespoons of butter and cook the onion and the celery over moderately low
heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened. Add the sage,
marjoram, rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste and cook the mixture, stirring,
for 3 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, add the corn bread, the
scallion, and salt and pepper to taste, and combine the stuffing gently but
thoroughly. Let the stuffing cool completely before using it to stuff a 12-14
pound turkey.

The stuffing can be baked separately: Spoon the stuffing into a buttered 3- to
4-quart casserole, drizzle it with the broth, and dot the top with the
additional 2 tablespoons of butter, cut into bits. Bake the stuffing, covered,
in the middle of a preheated 325 F degree oven for 30 minutes and bake it,
uncovered, for 30 minutes more.

Serves 8-10; fewer if I am one of the dinner guests!

Note: Here are the instructions if you want to add the sausage: The
recipe calls for “3/4 lb bulk pork sausage” that you brown in a skillet. Remove
it from the pan—leaving the fat—and proceed with cooking the onions, etc. Add
the sausage at the end, when you combine the cornbread and scallion with the
onion mixture.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

The Kirkus Reviews has named THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST as one
of the best books of fiction in 2015. (Okay, there are a number of books on
this list, so you have to go to page 10 to find me…but there I am!!)

…After several months of NYC publishers telling me my book
was “too sad” and that they couldn’t deal with short stories, I spent a year
entering the top fiction contests. The same basic manuscript was a
semi-finalist twice, rejected four times, and won the contest I would have
selected as the one I wanted most! I share this in an encouraging way: cast a
wide net and accept that there is always subjectivity to the publishing biz….

Today (November 17) is my last public book event for the year. I’ll be at
the annual Authors’ Night & Book Fair at the National Press Club, selling
books with a giant herd of other writers, including “Shirley” from the TV show “Laverne
& Shirley,” Sister Souljah, the former White House chef, assorted members
of congress and senators and ex-governors, poet Sandra Beasley…to name only a few! Do
stop by—surely this line-up is crazy enough to be wonderful fun!

Leslie Pietrzyk reads from her collection of short stories, This Angel on My Chest. She is joined by
Jehanne Dubrow, author of The Arranged
Marriage, a collection of prose poems. The reading will be followed by a
reception and book signing. Free admission.

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of five poetry collections,
including most recently The Arranged
Marriage (University of New Mexico Press, 2015), Red Army Red (Northwestern University Press, 2012), and Stateside (Northwestern University
Press, 2010). Her work has appeared in Virginia
Quarterly Review, The New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Hudson Review. She is the Director of
the Rose O’Neill Literary House and an Associate Professor of creative writing
at Washington College, where she edits the national literary journal, Cherry Tree.

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon Books) and A Year and a Day (William Morrow) and a
collection of short stories, This Angel
on My Chest, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her short fiction
has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, and The Sun magazine. Her work has been
nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she has won a number of writing awards,
including Shenandoah’s Jean Charpiot
Goodheart Prize for Fiction. She teaches at the Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic
Program’s graduate writing program, the Writer’s Center, and Converse College’s
low-residency MFA program.

responsibilities include editing, limited admin, and the
possibility of design (an anticipated 6-8 hours per month); compensation is a
€200 honorarium, books, training, and support. Writers of color, LGBTQ writers,
and women writers are especially encouraged to apply. Applicants may be based
anywhere in the world as long as they have a reliable internet connection.
Deadline November 30.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

What writer doesn’t feel like she needs more time for her
work? Shelby Settles Harper gets serious about becoming more productive during
her writing hours:

I sometimes feel like a loser when I think about how long
it’s taking me to write my first novel. Yes, I have a lot of good excuses
(writing it while earning an MA in Writing and while birthing/adopting/raising
three young children and writing it during my family’s three-year living abroad
experience). Perhaps I’m supposed to cut my teeth on one novel that’s a decade
in the making while other writers learn to write by writing two or three
novels…but none of those things makes me feel like less of a loser.

So I read a book on time management. It was awesome! It
turns out – light bulb! – that I’ve got a few bad habits that might contribute
to my slow pace. While I can’t control my kids’ sick days or school holidays,
there are many small changes I can make to be more productive…..